For our group thriller, we created an opening scene to introduce a unstable man who has recently lose his family in a tragic accident and fatally loses his daughter which sends him looking for replacement. This is a film of realism as it explores the psychological problems this man faces and the lengths his victim has to go through. This gives the audience empathy for the victim as the story unveils.
Q1. We specialised our film to perform the codes and conventions. We use concealment and protraction to keep suspense through our film. We did this by keeping our killers identity hidden and also by places the audience in a situation where they didn’t know the whole story line. This also links to the question and answer module, the audience are always left guessing and questioning the storyline; who is the man? Why is she tied up? How did she get there? We have also used partial vision, blocking the view of path so the audience feel on edge, making the things they can’t see just as important as what they can. For Example, when the killer walks down the stairs we can see from behind and cannot see where he disappears off to and when he will be approaching the victim. We have challenged the stereotypical hero; instead of the usual male victim who save the day, it’s a vulnerable young girl is our main focus in the story. Also the convention of transformed city has been challenged as we have set our film in a rural street area to keep it more naturalistic to for our audience so they can relate to it in everyday life.
We also used relevant screen shots in our opening which are also seen commonly in thriller films.
Point of view shots; This gives the shot from the audience’s perspective being in the killers shoes. This will trigger emotions for the audience like fear for the safety of the young girl as he gets closer and also uneasy in the scene because the killer is still not be shown and they do not know who he is. This shot is commonly used in thriller to illustrate the dangers and creates tension of the audiences view between the attacker and the victim.
Close-ups: These are used commonly in our film. It allows us to make the audience focus on important events such as picking up the scissors and as the pace of the editing quickens, it shows the intensity is also increasing. Close-ups are also used to portray our characters emotions as Kelly’s face in the first close-up shows a scared and venerable child which the viewers will the empathize with.
Q2. In our film we use young actors to make our audience empathise more with the characters. Our films is also about kidnapping, it relates to many films involving children. Man on fire shows a nine-year-old Pita Ramos being kidnapped and how she escapes danger. She is the similar age to Kelly in our film, as she in vulnerable it makes us emphasise more and want her to escape. For this role it challenges the typical hero by having through gender; being female she seems more vunerable and also her age; being alot younger than imagined in a hero it makes the audience emphasise with the character and want her to suceed more.
Our killer is seen later in the film to have mental problems; he is trying to latch on to children in an effort to be with his own dead daughter again. His actions relate to the character in ‘Changling’ who shows strange behaviours with his obsession of kidnapping and brutally torturing children. They show similar characteristics as it is only later in the film we discover our own killers problems. He conveys the stereotypical villian in this film, being male again a young girl it shows his power over her and that he has higher authority which makes the veiwers think her escape will be harder.
Q3. If our film was to be produced, a likely option would be for ‘Film Four Productions’, which has produced a number of British small scale film productions. Films include In Bruges, Train Spotting and Slumdog Millionaire. Through using this corporation, it would give a bigger chance of spread to countries like the US. However our film would be small scale and it would screen in just a few cinemas before being produced for copy were we would make most of our profits. However our film would be on a much lower budget and do not think it would be suitable for a bigger market industry like the US.
http://www.film4.com/
Q4. Our target audience would be aimed for over 15’s which is our certificate.For example Strong threat and menace are shown from the begginging of the film aswel as imatable behaviour, violence and a frequent use of strong language which will be used in the rest of the film.These criterias make our film a 15 and unsuitable for anyone under this age.
It will still be aimed to a generation possible to middle age males and females and below. Someone of this age could relate to the film maybe having children of their own as well as adolescent as the victim is close to their age range. The psychological aspects of this would be more challenging however, and would therefore also interest more mature adults of around 25-35’s. Younger people we feel would be interested in the maises and labrythins in the film and there is a bigger market for thriller/horror films for this age generation.
Here are a few people that would be interested in our film.
Q5.To understand what our audience wanted, we handed out questionnaires to young people fitting our age certificate. From questions like the type of music to use, fonts and lighting. One of the main questions we asked on the questionnaires was whether our killer should be shown in the film or for his identity to be kept secret. They voted for it to be kept secret for reasons like to keep the tension in the film and to follow the convention of concealment and protraction. Also it would keep the killer more hidden and leave the audience guessing and wanting to have something to wait for in the film. From our questionnaires we used the data to make the film reflect on what they wanted to see.
Q6.our film we used Premier Pro. It was a fairly simple and easy program to use once we got used to the different tools on the program. From this, we managed to edit our films in more detail to give us closer and smoother cuts and an array of effects to add to our film to promote the film.
For the making our film we used a lot of equipment like the camera. The cameras were easy to function with a focus lens to allow us close-up on our film.
We also used the tripod to help keep the camera steady in longer takes and to access more angles like the low and high angle shots we used in the opening scene.
For editing we also used 'premier pro' which helped us to cut out parts of our film aswel as creating sound and making visual effects which could not just be done ont he camera equipment.
